Unsolicited Proposals in Infrastructure: A growing reality for governments, requiring robust management frameworks

Unsolicited proposals (USPs) for infrastructure give rise to significant concerns related to transparency, quality and fair competition in public procurement.

Government officials deal with USPs on a regular basis, however, and this trend is only expected to continue and to grow in the future. The best approach might, thus, be to develop robust frameworks for managing them, and to have a differentiated approach based on the maturity of the private-public procurement market in a particular country.

This discussion paper provides a synopsis of the salient features of a report published by the Public-Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility (PPIAF) entitled Unsolicited Proposals (USPs) – An Exception to Public Initiation of Infrastructure PPPs: An Analysis of Global Trends and Lessons Learned, and concludes with a discussion on the relevance of USPs to sustainable public procurement.